An amazing pill which contains a camera to help diagnose serious bowel conditions
Doctors and nurses in Wales are using amazing cameras in pill-form to detect signs of serious bowel conditions. Here, Mark Smith speak to two clinicians about the technology which is speeding up the diagnostic process...
Patients who suffer problems with their small bowel can now swallow a pill-sized camera which captures tens of thousands of images as its travels through the body.
Capsule endoscopy, which is being carried out at University Hospital Llandough, is a painless diagnostic test which speeds up the detection of certain conditions such as inflammatory bowel disease (IBD) or anaemia.
A wireless PillCam, which is roughly the size of a large vitamin or antibiotic tablet, takes several highdefinition pictures per second as it reaches parts of the small bowel that conventional, more invasive camera tests cannot reach.
The pictures captured are then transmitted to a belt the patient wears around their waist – or sticky pads that are placed around the stomach and lower chest – before being connected to a device which records all the data.
Once the tablet is naturally passed
through the body and disposed of, the rest of the equipment is then given back to the hospital where hours of footage are analysed.
Nurse Angela Green and consultant Jeff Turner, both specialists in gastroenterology, look out for polyps, ulcers and tumours of the small bowel, as well as any sources of bleeding.
“It’s a fantastic diagnostic tool. It allows us to visualise parts of the small bowel where we haven’t been able to previously,” said Angela.
“It gives us answers where other procedures don’t.”
Jeff added: “The test is non-invasive and not painful in any way, shape or form.
“And the nice thing is that patients can be in the comfort of their own home while the camera is capturing the images.
“You just need to come into the hospital for an hour or so, swallow the tablet and then pop the equipment back the next day.”
The plastic pill-form camera, which cots around £500, has two sections: one which is white and houses a tiny battery with an 11-hour life, while the other clear section includes four light sources and the state-of-the-art camera.
“The tablet gives us roughly a 340-degree magnified view of the small bowel as it travels through,” added Angela.
“It takes up to 50,000 very clear images in the small bowel, and the quicker it travels the more pictures it takes, so it’s quite a clever piece of kit.”
Patients are typically referred for a capsule endoscopy after having several other camera tests to examine the stomach and large bowel (colon).
They may also have had an X-ray test on the small bowel, which does not produce such well-defined images, or an endoscopy which is more invasive and uncomfortable.
“There are people who have had a normal X-ray test and it’s only when we do the capsule test that we see the ulcers and other things in their bowel,” added Jeff.
“These people can be quite symptomatic with diarrhoea and have a poor quality of life, so if we do notice any problems it’s really nice to be able to give them treatment more quickly than before.”
Before the examination takes